Hob Broun - Odditorium

“You’ve got to learn to compromise,” Tildy said. She went swiftly to the window and called Pete over. “Let’s deal.”

He moved languidly, examining his hands front and back for traces of food. “Marvelous. We’ll settle it now, and then everyone can have a slice of Dolly’s blackberry pie.”

“We’ll give you half, Pete. Free and clear.”

“Give?” Sparn’s voice jumped an octave. “You’ll give me half?”

“Seems more than fair to me. In a just world, a claim jumper like you would be hanging by his neck from the nearest tree.”

Shooting his heavily starched cuffs, Sparn clucked sadly. “I am here to retrieve the contents of Lester’s trunk. All of it. There is simply nothing more to talk about. No bargains, no trades. You’ll have it ready as soon as I finish my dessert, clear?”

A nerveless fixity. A thick black line drawn flat across the air. Three sets of lungs worked in rhythm and three pairs of eyes kept closed. Man and wife and suitor sat in a row on the sofa like end-stage crackpots in the lobby of a welfare hotel, loitering without sentiment at the scene of their own ruin.

An auto horn fanfare, then Pete bellowing through cupped hands. “This is your last chance to cooperate. If you don’t come out voluntarily, we’ll have to force you out.”

Tildy whispered, “He means it.”

“Fuck him.” Christo breathed deep. “We handled his Vinnie Winnie before, we can do it again.”

“Absolutely the last call.” Pete waited. “It’s your choice then. I’ve done my best.”

The green bottle in Vinnie’s hand was filled with kerosene. He thumbed the wheel of his lighter, the rag wick flared and he started to run. Christo saw the orange streak first, screamed, and the others were already scrambling away as Vinnie hurled the firebomb. Flames spread across the floor and up the wall. As Christo retreated, one leg of his jeans caught. He dropped and rolled, smothering the burning denim with his hands.

“Got to contain it in this room.” Christo sprang up, coughing. “Turn shower on. Soak down. Blankets, towels too. Go. Run.”

With augmented strength from spurting adrenaline, he pulled furniture away from the front of the room where the blaze was worst. Heat was something alive on his skin and wanted to squeeze the breath out of him. Then Tildy was beside him with a wet towel in either hand, beating at a diagonal line of flame trying to skid behind their defenses. Ashes swirled in the air, all that was left of the curtains. Karl emerged from the haze with soaked shirts and a wastebasket of water.

“More, more. Fill pots, whatever you can find.”

“I can’t breathe,” Tildy cried.

“Keep on. Push it back.”

“Too fast. Coming too fast.”

Christo flailed like a mad dervish at the oncoming wedge of flames. He was half blind and pain spread over his hands. They were losing ground. He knew very soon it would be time to run. Cold water exploding on his back and, through a chink in the smoke, Karl waving his arms.

“Found a piece of hose. Hook it to the sink, it might reach.”

“Let’s do it. Our only shot.”

Karl jammed one end of the hose up inside the running faucet and made a seal of encircling fingers. Christo took the other end as far as it would go, had to press his thumb over the threaded socket and arc the spray to make it reach. But it did reach. Already the smoke was thinning. Tildy screamed his name.

“Over here. I’m over here.”

She zigzagged in trying to follow his voice, finally tumbled at his feet, her black face twisted with retching. No time to soothe. Christo got her upright, gave her the hose, told her to keep it moving from side to side. Then he filled soup pots from the toilet and ran them to trouble zones; back and forth, his hands throbbing, back and forth, tripping and spilling, throat constricted, until he collapsed. Tildy aimed the hose at him and he wanted to swim up the stream, curl inside the tubing and sleep for days.

They’d done it. The fire was dead and gone, leaving only soot and blisters and nausea. But it had sucked their reservoirs dry, exhausted their resistance. Hearts ping-ponging, they lay on the wet floor awaiting the inevitable. This engorged playlet, delirious with its own simplicities of greed and power, would have its third act climax all over them.

On the other side of the charred wall, Pete Sparn swallowed a little brown hypertension pill and wondered aloud.

“It never crossed your mind to cut their power line so the water pump wouldn’t function? It never crossed your mind to simply crash in through the back and get what we came for? I’m discouraged, Vincent. I consider all the time and care, everything I’ve invested, to produce the blundering simp standing before me and I’m deeply discouraged.”

Snapping the spring clip into his weapon, Vinnie said, “I’m going to take care of it, Dad. I’m going to take care of it right now.”

“Not that way. We’ve had enough fireworks for one night.”

“Please. Let me show you what I can do.”

“Unfortunately, you already have. And on the dubious assumption that you could carry the operation off, three dead bodies add up to a complication I don’t need.”

“Think about it, Dad. Who’s going to give a rusty fuck for these zeros?”

“A corpse is a corpse and each one has to be accounted for,” Sparn said wearily. “As usual you fail to use basic management principles in attacking the problem. No, I’m going to have to solve this one myself.”

“I’m not letting you go in there solo.”

“Just wait in the car, Son. Dolly needs the company.”

Sparn would have knocked on the door, but it was giving off faint wisps of smoke and he was afraid he might burn himself.

“Aloha, young people. Your tenacity does you credit. All the same, this has turned into too long a night for my taste. Let’s put a final period on it.”

“Go on,” Tildy rasped, knowing in her innards that they couldn’t beat him. “Let the bastard in.”

Christo limped to the door. “Come ahead, bossman. I’ve been wanting to get a whiff of you up close.”

“Who are you?”

“Just a friend of the family.”

“And where do you stand in all this?”

“Probably in your way. Come on, the kitchen’s still basically intact.”

Sparn picked his way through rubble, resigning himself to the defacement of his white loafers, and breathed with the PS handkerchief over his mouth. The sight of Karl and Tildy propped against one another startled him. Their unearthly zombie eyes. A nervous edge came on him.

“Glad you could make it, Pete,” she said. “You’ll have to excuse the mess.”

“Yeah, too bad about that.” With his back flush against the drainboard, he edged along to where he could keep an eye on all three of them. “But we can still resolve this without serious injury. How does that sound?”

“Preferable,” Tildy said.

“You see how it is. We’re all very tired and we can’t stand the sight of each other. Be smart. Give me the fucking goods and we’ll say goodbye forever.”

“Just curious,” Christo said. “You ever done time?”

“I’m a businessman. We don’t do time. We smash it like the atom.”

“Everything comes easy for you,” Christo said. “It’s not healthy.”

Karl was trying hard not to listen. He filled his mind with pinups of fish: Grouper, scup, bonito, yellowtail; all arrested in midthrash, fins stretched and gills open. He felt his wife’s flesh against him like the resistance of water and wished only to go deeper.

Sparn shifted from foot to foot, confident of his machinery, but wary. These people were crazy, unconditioned by basic management principles.